New River Community College is located in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, just minutes from Virginia Tech, one of nation's top engineering and architectural universities.

There is a tremendous emphasis throughout this program on becoming proficient in areas such as: Reverse Engineering, Prototyping Design, multiple variations of 3D printing (Additive Manufacturing), 3D Scanning and point cloud manipulation, Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing, ASME and ISO standards and most importantly, “Attention to Detail”.

New to the EDT program is course and introduction to small Unmanned Drone systems that include: rules and laws governing drone/aircraft flight,
certificaiton, maintenance, design, reverse engineering along with virtual training.

Within the two years of program study, students will become proficient in a number of the world's top design software programs: AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit, Creo (Pro-E), Keyshot, SpaceClaim, Adobe Photoshop, Premiere, Sketchup and more.

Strong mechanical design skills and standards are the primary focus in the New River Engineering Design program. Coupled with the technical design skills is a strong emphasis in 3D modeling, animation and presentation.

“At the end of the day every company and every firm has to market and sell the capabilities that it has to continue to win more projects. Our students come out of the Engineering Design Technology program with a diverse set of skills and can bring these to the table at very high level of proficiency,” states the Engineering Design Technology program head Jeff Levy.

New River’s two-year Engineering Design Technology degree has more core classes “Engineering Design Technology” and “ARC” than many four- year schools in the country. They work with real world projects both individually and in team environments their second year.

These projects are highlighted by two capstone projects in their fourth semester with team special projects such as reverse engineering a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine or designing the next generation (UCAV) unmanned combat air vehicle. In addition, there is a final individual project of their choosing that is guided by their advisor.

Architecture and engineering firms throughout the region have come to depend on the talented and knowledgeable
students have the opportunity gain both Mechanical and Architectural Design and CAD experience through this 4 semester program.

Upon graduation, students will some of the basic introductory skills in architectural CAD design that may afford them an opportunity to compete for entry level positions at Architectural and Engineering Firms.

Students will receive training in basic residential fundamentals of construction methodology as well as entry level commercial steel building aspects of the REVIT Architectural Design Tools and an introduction to BIM.

Students will work with multiple software packages throughout the 4 semesters that are currently being used in A&E firms world wide. AutoCAD, REVIT, Sketchup, Photoshop and Adobe Premiere.

To view detail of team, individual and course projects, click on the thumbnail image.

Throughout the two-year program, students have an opportunity to do numerous team and individual projects that simulate real-world scenarios. Students are given project specifications to follow and are presented with a design challenge that they must complete within those specs.

In the first semester, students in the CAD 120 class learn basics of drawing and technical/engineering sketching. They learn a number of different varying artistic styles and techniques including: hatching, stippling, cartooning, shading and drawing caricatures. Individual weekly drawings allow the student to concentrate on subject matter related to their specialization.

Second and third semester projects focus the student toward class-specific material and provide a great teaching opportunity for the students from peer-to-peer.

By the time students reach the fourth semester, they have been immersed in at least a dozen software programs and thousands of pages of standards and industry-related material. This is the “Show Me” semester where the student takes advantage of past and current knowledge to work in both a team project environment (CAD 242), an individual final semester project (CAD 203) and put together a first-class portfolio and resume, in addition to learning interviewing skills for their job search.

To view detail of individual and team projects, click on the thumbnail image.

Over the past six years, students have worked in conjunction with many individuals and companies on industry-based projects. These areas have varied from concept designs of UAV, UCAV and UGVs to the reverse engineering of the U.S. Navy’s most classified weapon in the world -- a Virginia Class Fast Attack Nuclear Submarine.

In addition, students have spent the past ten months working on a new concept design for the U.S. Navy’s SSBNX program. (above graphic). The engineering department at the University of Iowa is working on CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamic) testing of this 500 foot submarine model to analyze the flow characteristics of the design.

Students recently finished working on a three year project with the North Carolina Maritime Museum, reverse engineering the Queen Anne’s Revenge (QAR), Black Beard’s ship. The ship is currently being brought up from the ocean floor piece by piece off the coast of North Carolina and students at New River Community College are recreating every timber and detail of the ship in a 3D model for both historical records as well as creating an interactive 3D experience for the guests of the museum.

The digital interactive project is now on display at the museum and the museum is under renovation to add additional space for this exibit.

While on vacation several years ago, Engineering Design Technology department head Jeff Levy and his family visited the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort. The featured exhibit was the reclamation and underwater archaeological excavation of the Queen Anne’s Revenge (QAR)

A private dive team from Intersal, Inc. discovered a number of artifacts/items on the seabed near the Beaufort Inlet and it was determined that this was the ship wreck of the pirate Black Beard and his flagship the Queen Anne’s Revenge.

After Levy had many conversations with the museum’s curator, Paul Fontenoy, they decided that a digital reconstruction of this ship needed to be done. New River was selected to undertake this project due to the extensive background of the college’s Engineering Design Technology program in working with large 3D modeling, rendering and animation projects.

This project evolved into an in-depth 3 year multi-team project that involved reverse engineering drawings from archives that dated back to the 1600s.
It also required the translation of French dialects and measurement systems that have not been used in nearly 300 years. The final project entails large format
2D prints, 3D models of each and every timber of the ship, assemblies, animations and an interactive 3D model that allows the museum’s patrons to navigate
The ship in Real Time.

Three years ago, a team of advanced design students along with their instructor, Jeff Levy, decided that they would reverse engineer a Virginia Class Nuclear Fast Attack Submarine by gathering as much public information that was available.

Surprisingly between the Internet, general research, one-on-one accounts, working with the Submarine Research Facility in Maine and a couple of former submarine officers, the students were able to recreate a close facsimile of a Virginia Class submarine with a high degree of accuracy.

The SSBN-X project is a project built upon the groundwork laid by the previous team. Examining the data that was gathered previously in addition to another six months of research and gathering data that pertained to the Ohio Class and other similar SSBN type submarines, the students were able to develop a concept design that may set the standard for concept designs and modeling at the post secondary level.

Currently the University of Iowa is working on CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamic) testing of this 500 foot submarine model to analyze the flow charicteristics of the design.

Over the past six years, students have worked in conjunction with many individuals, companies and universities on industry-based projects. These areas have varied from concept designs of UAV, UCAV and UGVs to the reverse engineering of the U.S. Navy’s most classified weapon -- a Virginia Class Fast-Attack Nuclear Submarine.

The unmanned concept designs have varied over the years and ranged from tactical UGV’s to reconnaissance drones, to flying wing bombers, strike fighters, vertical take-off and landing UAV’s to this year’s fifth generation Unmanned Air Superiority Fighter (UASF) and a modular tactical, reconnaissance and crowd control UGV.

Both the UASF & UGV projects are true cross-curriculum projects that include three NRCC transfer engineering students on each team. These teams are also working with professors and graduate students from two major universities, two professional concept artists and engineers and a computational fluid dynamics company in Michigan.

Five advanced Engineering Design Technology students along with their instructor, Jeff Levy, undertook the task of reverse engineering the most sophisticated weapon ever devised and implemented in the history of Naval war fare; the Virginia Class fast attack nuclear submarine with only information that was available in public domain as well as working with a couple former submarine officers that shared general information about the submarine from first-hand accounts.

The submarine research center in Maine also played a key role in helping the students understand the workings of this complicated boat.

“I reviewed the project and was impressed with your students’ ability to take information within the public domain and develop a believable graphical representation of a fast-attack submarine. Their work clearly demonstrates an understanding of spatial arrangement, functional realism and a high-level of competency utilizing the full capability of the design, too.” Chris Miner – VA Class Project Manager, USN.